The Roles and Responsibilites of Trustees
On Friday 30th January 2015, we’re again running our “Roles and Responsibilities of Trustees” training session. Over the course of two hours we’ll help you to understand the role of a trustee or committee member a bit better, so you know what you should and shouldn’t do, how you need to behave and what you need to do to be effective.
This short, introductory course is a great start for anyone joining a board for the first time (or needing a refresher). If you’ve been in the role for a while, then hopefully you already know what you’re supposed to be doing!
More practical details about the course are below, or contact Karl Elliott at VANEL if you’d like to discuss your governance/trustee training needs more specifically. We can also run this course exclusively for the committee members of your charity/group/organisation through arrangement at a time/venue more convenient for yourselves – just contact us to discuss.
Booking is essential for the session on 30th January, so please reserve your place.
If you can’t make the sessions, then here’s a quick run-down of some resources that you should take a look at if you are a new Trustee or Committee Member. With a bit of luck your organisation should have introduced you to most of these during the induction process, but you may have missed some. We’ll cover these resources in the training session to.
About Trusteeship
Don’t forget:
If you are on the board of a registered charity then you are likely to be a Trustee, and the Charity Commission covers what you do.
If your organisation is also a limited company then you could be a Company Director as well, and will be addressed by Companies House and company law.
If your organisation is constituted but not necessarily a charity, then you are a Committee Member but not necessarily a Trustee, and your constitution or governing documents will be an important place to start reading.
Here’s an overview of the legal duties of a Trustee on the KnowHowNonProfit website: http://knowhownonprofit.org/leadership/governance/board-responsibilities/legal-duties-of-trustees
The Charity Commission website is here https://www.gov.uk/running-charity/trustee-role-board with information about the Trustee role and managing the board. Their overview here https://www.gov.uk/charity-trustee-whats-involved is a good place to start.
Every Trustee should start by making themselves aware of the “Essential Trustee”. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-essential-trustee-what-you-need-to-know-cc3
As part of a board or committee, you should be seriously looking at how your entire board works – it’s governance approach – and what your part is in this process. One good tool for this is the voluntary Code of Good Governance: http://www.governancecode.org/
This sets out principles etc that you and the committee/board should be following. You can use the code in many ways (we cover this during our training), but in my opinion every Trustee should be knowledgeable about the code.
There’s obviously a lot more detail in being a competent, safe and effective Trustee, but at the very least you should be familiar with all those resources above.
Course Practicalities
Our training session is on Friday 30th January 2015, from 10am-12noon and will be held at West Marsh Community Centre, Grimsby.
Please book your place via Karl Elliott, karl@vanel.org.uk, or through Peter Hewson via 01472 231123.
The cost of this session is currently being kept very low – £5 per person for Member or Friend organisations or £10 for individuals from other organisations.
NB: The last notification for this course had the venue as West Marsh Community Centre. This has now been changed to the Willows instead. Sorry for any inconvenience.
What’s in the course?
During the two hour training course we will help Trustees learn:
what they must do
what they should do
what they could do
how to behave
how to be useful to the organisation
how to learn and develop themselves and gain from trusteeship
how to get support
how to work as an individual trustee but also as part of the team
and more…
We’ll take a look at:
Trusteeship – an opportunity and a responsibility
The legal trustee
The principled trustee
The purposeful trustee
The well behaved trustee
The skilled trustee
The effective trustee
The supported trustee
Any further questions, please contact Karl as above.